Charles Bonham-Carter

General Sir Charles Bonham-Carter, (25 February 1876 – 21 October 1955) was a British Army officer and later Governor of Malta. Early life Bonham-Carter was born on 25 February 1876 in Kensington, London, the ninth of eleven children of Henry and Sibella Charlotte Bonham-Carter. His father was a director of an insurance company. He was educated at Clifton College near Bristol and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Military career Bonham-Carter was commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant in the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment on 29 February 1896, and was promoted to a lieutenant on 16 July 1898. Serving in the 2nd Battalion of his regiment, he was in early 1900 posted to South Africa for active service in the Second Boer War. Together with 1030 officers and men of the battalion, he left Southampton on the SS Bavarian in March 1900, and on arriving in South Africa was part of the 17th Brigade, 8th Division. The battalion stayed there until after the end of the war in 1902, and then was posted to Ceylon. He went to the British Army Staff College in Camberley and joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France as a regimental officer. He held a number of staff posts in France and between 1917 and 1918 he was Brigadier General Staff (Training) at the General Headquarters, despite opposition he started programmes to train the men in general and vocational subjects. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the American Distinguished Service Medal for his work and was mentioned in dispatches five times.